Where do I start?
In my second year of university my SO and I decided to move in together, but since the relationship was only a year old, we felt it would be best to have roommates, just for added company in case things went bad. Through a series of unfortunate events, we ended up renting two rooms on the ground floor of a house with 4 other guys that we didn’t know. We had been intending to move in with a couple of other people, but things just didn’t work out.
So, out of those 4 guys, only one was decent. He cleaned up after himself, and kept fairly quiet hours, and was often at his girlfriend’s place anyways. The only annoyance was having to shuffle cars in and out of the long driveway, but since his was a nice Audi A4, I didn’t even mind that too much!
Then there was T. I posted a rant once in the Pit about him - I called him Thunderfeet the Egotistical. He was very loud, and very selfcentred. He drenched himself in cheap cologne whenever he went out - even just to go to McDonalds. His room was directly above ours, and he had a habit of sleeping in til 4pm, then staying up all night to watch TV and do homework. Unfortunately, he liked his TV on LOUD, and his sound system had a subwoofer. When he did homework, he liked to stomp around his room to think (in a 40 year old house, where the floors squeeked) while listening to really mediocre dance music at full blast. EVERY request to have him stop, and to be quiet during the night led to indignant arguments that it was HIS room, and he could do whatever he wanted. Pointing out that the entire house was awake at 3am because of him didn’t phase him one bit. T. also had a habit of stockpiling meat in the freezer, and then eating nothing but McDonald’s and pizza. So the freezer was full of meat he wouldn’t eat, and he got mad when we tossed some of it out. He allowed a bag of onions in his drawer to rot - or, I should say - liquify. The fruitfly infestation was HORRIBLE! He used our pots and pans and plates and never cleaned them. In fact, I don’t think he ever cleaned ANYTHING. And what’s worse, is the dishes would pile up in the sink, even though we had a DISHWASHER.
And K. Quiet guy, from somewhere in the philipines I think, with absolutely no idea how to live on his own. His mom had done everything for him. He once was all proud to have started the dishwasher - but he’d forgotten to add soap. He said he didn’t know he needed to. At least he made a moderate effort! But the worst was his eating habits. He ate a lot of fish. A LOT of fish. Fish that wasn’t always totally fresh, and so the entire house would REEK whenever he cooked. And he tended to cook late meals - like 2am late. Nothing quite like being woken up at 2am to the smell of fish. He once prepared crab and dumped bits of it into one of the two sinks, but then piled his dishes over them…the kitchen REEKED, and it took us a week to figure out where the hell that stink was coming from. His family once came to visit - mom, dad and sister - and for an entire month they stayed in his bedroom. They’d pop down for food, then stay up there all day, every day. Very weird.
M was the fourth guy. At the time, he seemed ok, and while we knew that his bedroom was unliveable by our standards, that was his space and so it didn’t bother us. We all three opted to move out of the house into a nice 2 bedroom apartment (my SO and I would share the master bedroom, he’d get the small one). I guess he only seemed like a good roommate in comparison to the other guys!
M didn’t really do his laundry, though he did shower every day, so it wasn’t SO bad. He’d go home every few weekends, and likely did a BIT of cleaning, but some things, like his bath towel, never got washed in the 6 months he was with us. I remember once, near the end, he’d soaked it through somehow, and hung it on the shower rod to dry. It was dripping BROWN water. He insisted on using our nicer dishes all the time, rather than the older, more versatile set, and would use our (expensive) wine glasses for milk. He broke one once, and lied about it. He’d occasionally let food spoil in the fridge. Whenever he ate, food would end up all over the kitchen counter, floor and dining room table and he would never clean it up. He never once cleaned the stove or counter, or swept the floor, or anything. His idea of doing the dishes was to run them under hot water for about 5 seconds. When he shaved, the bathroom would seem COVERED in shaving cream. He didn’t pay his utility bills, despite monthly reminders (though when he moved, he gave us an approximate lump sum, since we threathened to deal with his parents if he didn’t). Basically, he was just messy, and we were always having to clean up after him.
The worst part, though, was his girlfriend. R was manic depressive, and had attempted suicide when we lived in th first house. She once dumped M, started going out with some other guy, and kept trying to make M be friends with him. When other guy dumped her, she came running back to M, and he took her back. The tended to throw fits over every little thing, and refused to take medication since that meant she couldn’t drink - and she was, IMHO, an alcoholic.She wasn’t happy in her basement apartment, and at one point M asked if R could move in with us. The apartment simply isn’t big enough for 4 adults, and so we said No. Within the week, however, she was spending 6 days a week at our place, she’d cancelled her cell phone and was giving out OUR phone number as hers (someone once actually attempted to call her COLLECT, on our line - I told them to fuck off and that she didn’t live here…while she was sitting 3 feet away). She spent her days skipping class and using M’s computer, while neither he nor her had paid us for phone and internet. She seemed to think it was free, even when we approached them on the issue. She was even messier than M, if that was possible.
The straw that broke the camels back was in early November 2002. On the weekend, my SO and I had spent about 3-4 hours cleaning the apartment from top to bottom. The place gleamed. They came in on Sunday night, made some food and went to bed. They got up earlier than us and made pancakes, and he had shaved, and then he left for classes. When we got up, we noticed shaving cream all over the sink and mirror, pancake batter all over the kitchen (including the floors and walls), OUR maple syrup all over the dining room table and OUR placemats, they had tracked mud across the living room to his desk, and up the hallway into his room, and she was sitting at his computer using “free” internet and talking to her parents - a long distance call - on our phone.
I told her that we’d spent HOURS cleaning up, and to clean up after herself and M. Her response? “I have my own apartment, I don’t have to clean this one”
:eek:
:mad:
I pointed out that she was HERE 6 days a week, and that she’d better clean up, or she wasn’t welcome here. In fact, M was gone for the day, and so she should leave, since she wasn’t welcome when he wasn’t here. She said something along the lines of “M wouldn’t like the way you’re treating me” and I told her I didn’t care - he didn’t scare me in the least. A bit more yelling back and forth, and I left for school. Neither one were home when I got home.
M came home later that night and told me he wasn’t happy living here, and he didn’t feel like it was his home, and he didn’t like how I treated R. I told him I didn’t care, and he was free to leave if he wanted - my SO and I had agreed that we could handle the rent ourselves. He told us he’d stay the month, until he could find another place, and at the end of the month he moved to another building with R. They fought on the day they moved - I HOPE they got fed up of each other and realised what horrible people they both are. To add insult to injury, when they moved, they STOLE kitchen stuff from us. Apparently M had “accidentally” washed all the water glasses and mugs and some storage containers and then “accidentally” packed them. He even took a pair of my shoes, gods only know why. We contacted him through his parents and told them that we wanted our things back, or we WOULD call the cops - the stolen things weren’t high value, but it’s the principle of the thing! He returned our things a few days later - by leaving them dirty in a plastic bag in front of the super’s office, with the apartment number on a tag. The super wasn’t happy, but neither were we. He was a total wuss - too afraid to face us.
Since then, my SO and I have been living alone (well, with the cat) together in this apartment, and we love it. We will never again have roommates, other than each other (and any kids we might have, I suppose!)
Gah, just writing this all out got my blood boiling. How can people be SO AWFUL??